UClinux based embedded asterix PBX

In my quest for a new VOIP setup (I’m hunting for a new sip provider – got suggestions?) I ran across an excellent project that’s been put together by [David]. It’s a four port open source asterix PBX that runs under UClinux. He derived the design from a BlackfinOne (A dedicated UClinux board). He covers building the IPO4 in four parts series that starts here. It’s probably one of the more intense open source hardware derived projects I’ve run across.

Pretty interesting project. I’d like to see more about the Layout though. Seems to be a pretty large board, but maybe he was fitting the connectors to a specific enclosure. I hope he actually used a 4-layer board for power and ground. Could be pretty important with all those long run signal lines. I guess it’s not a high speed device or anything though.

Nice but it uses FXO and FXS interfaces. If you are going to do this at home you might not need those. Just use SIP phones and a VOIP provider.A small Asterisk PBX is no big deal, you could build one out of NSLU, WAP, or even a GUMSTIX. Building one that supports FXO and FXS interfaces. That is the impressive part.

I use sipphone.com, they’re the guys behind gizmo. It works rather well, has good quality calls, and offers stuff like inbound messaging, voicemail (if you don’t want asterisk to do it for you) etc. and it’s not very expensive.

Picking a voip provider is a pretty specific thing. You need to find one with DID service in your area, plus a rate schedule that works for you.

If you travel at all, IAX2 is a much better protocol for connecting to your provider than SIP because of the firewall issues. Plugging a SIP phone into a random network isn’t going to work out well most of the time. Unfortunately, IAX2 based devices are few and most are poorly built.

I’ve had excellent experiences with Broadvoice, Voicepulse Connect (connect.voicepulse.com), and Vitelity. I’m using * as part of a commercial service offering for fire departments (second signal) and find these providers to be reliability and generally of good quality.

broadvoice hands down, been using them for 1.5 years, support for asterisk, much better quality and built in features than i had with other sip providers (email notifications, almost real time billing, unlimited calls to landline calls in europe as well as us/canada). i’ve had no outages. this project looks great, fantastic find will!

Wow that is a cool project i don’t know why it took me this long to find something like this. I have been wanting to build an embedded voip box to use at my house and try selling. I use voip.ms for cheap phone service, they have inbound and outbound that works very well.